Brussels Airport braces for 1.7 million holiday travellers and adds four new winter routes

Brussels Airport Company says this year’s francophone autumn break will kick-off with an exceptionally busy day on Friday, 16 October, when some 82 000 passengers are expected to pass through the terminal. Over the two-week francophone holiday—followed immediately by the separate Dutch-speaking school break—the airport forecasts more than 1.7 million passengers, a volume that will test security screening, baggage handling and landside traffic flows. To keep the lines moving, the airport is urging Schengen passengers to arrive two hours before departure and non-Schengen passengers three hours ahead of time, while reminding motorists that parking can be pre-booked and that rail and bus links have been reinforced. The advice is aimed squarely at business travellers keen to avoid missing early-morning flights, as well as corporate travel managers who must factor longer dwell times into itineraries. At the same time, Brussels Airport has published its winter timetable, which starts on 25 October and now features 136 nonstop destinations—four of them brand new. EasyJet will open Nantes, Spain’s new carrier Fly2Galicia will connect Santiago de Compostela twice weekly, and Brussels Airlines will add Nordic niches Kemi-Tornio (Finland) and Evenes (Norway) for winter-sport and Northern-Lights traffic. Etihad, meanwhile, is boosting Abu Dhabi frequencies from seven to eleven weekly, illustrating a rapid rebound in long-haul corporate demand. The combination of record holiday throughput and a broadened route map underlines Brussels Airport’s role as a regional hub for multinationals based in Belgium. HR and mobility teams should brief employees on possible queues, advise the use of digital boarding passes to minimise contact points, and monitor load factors on the new routes, which may offer cost-effective connections for project work in Spain, France and the Nordic region. With the airport’s SHIFT 2027 strategy focused on sustainability and innovation, officials say additional self-service bag-drops and automated border-control stations will come online over the winter, reducing wait times further in 2027. For now, however, the key to a smooth journey remains early arrival and careful luggage planning, especially on Friday 16 October—the single busiest travel day Belgium has seen since before the pandemic.